Arcadia: Act 2, Scene 5

BERNARD: ‘Did it happen? Could it happen? Undoubtedly it could. Only three years earlier the Irish poet Tom Moore appeared on the field of combat to avenge a review by Jeffrey of the Edinburgh. These affairs were seldom fatal and sometimes farcical but, potentially, the duellist stood in respect to the law no differently from a murderer.

BERNARD:...On April 16th 1809, a few days after he left Sidley Park, Byron wrote to his solicitor John Hanson: ‘If the consequences of my leaving England were ten times as ruinous as you describe, I have no alternative; there are circumstances which render it absolutely indispensable, and quit the country I must immediately.’

BERNARD:...On April 16th 1809, a few days after he left Sidley Park, Byron wrote to his solicitor John Hanson: ‘If the consequences of my leaving England were ten times as ruinous as you describe, I have no alternative; there are circumstances which render it absolutely indispensable, and quit the country I must immediately.’

BERNARD stares at her balefully but then continues to read.

BERNARD: ‘The Byrons of Newstead in 1809 comprised an eccentric widow and her undistinguished son, the “lame brat”, who until the age of ten when he came into the tide, had been carted about the country from lodging to lodging by his vulgar hectoring monster of a mother – ’

BERNARD:...Between the Byrons and the Coverlys there was no social equality and none to be expected. The connection, undisclosed to posterity until now, was with Septimus Hodge, Byron’s friend at Harrow and Trinity College –

BERNARD: Life and death. Right. ‘Nothing could be more eloquent of that than the three documents I have quoted: the terse demand to settle a matter in private; the desperate scribble of “my husband has sent for pistols”; and on April 11th, the gauntlet thrown down by the aggrieved and cuckolded author Ezra Chater.

BERNARD: Life and death. Right. ‘Nothing could be more eloquent of that than the three documents I have quoted: the terse demand to settle a matter in private; the desperate scribble of “my husband has sent for pistols”; and on April 11th, the gauntlet thrown down by the aggrieved and cuckolded author Ezra Chater.

BERNARD: Life and death. Right. ‘Nothing could be more eloquent of that than the three documents I have quoted: the terse demand to settle a matter in private; the desperate scribble of “my husband has sent for pistols”; and on April 11th, the gauntlet thrown down by the aggrieved and cuckolded author Ezra Chater.

BERNARD: Life and death. Right. ‘Nothing could be more eloquent of that than the three documents I have quoted: the terse demand to settle a matter in private; the desperate scribble of “my husband has sent for pistols”; and on April 11th, the gauntlet thrown down by the aggrieved and cuckolded author Ezra Chater.

BERNARD: Life and death. Right. ‘Nothing could be more eloquent of that than the three documents I have quoted: the terse demand to settle a matter in private; the desperate scribble of “my husband has sent for pistols”; and on April 11th, the gauntlet thrown down by the aggrieved and cuckolded author Ezra Chater.

BERNARD: I will be taking questions at the end. Constructive comments will be welcome. Which is indeed my reason for trying out in the provinces before my London opening under the auspices of the Byron Society prior to publication. By the way, Valentine, do you want a credit? – ‘the game book recently discovered by.’?

BERNARD: ‘As recently pointed out by.’ I don’t normally like giving credit where it’s due, but with scholarly articles as with divorce, there is a certain cachet in citing a member of the aristocracy.

HANNAH: But the first one, ‘The Maid of Turkey’, was the year before. Was he clairvoyant?

BERNARD: Thank you! Exactly! There is a platonic letter which confirms everything – lost but ineradicable, like radio voices rippling through the universe for all eternity.

Everything becomes loud and overlapped as BERNARD threatens to walk out and is cajoled into continuing.

Having made a great show of putting his pages away, BERNARD reassembles them and finds his place, glancing suspiciously at the other three for signs of levity.

No mean performer, he is pleased with the effect of his peroration. There is a significant silence.

BERNARD: I intend to. Look to the mote in your own eye! – you even had the wrong bloke on the dust-jacket!

BERNARD:...I can’t think of anything more trivial than the speed of light. Quarks, quasars – big bangs, black holes...

BERNARD: (Ignoring her) If knowledge isn’t self-knowledge it isn’t doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing ‘When Father Painted the Parlour’? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you. ‘She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that’s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.’

He instantly receives a sharp stinging slap on the face but manages to remain completely unperturbed by it.

BERNARD: ‘Five hundred acres including forty of lake – the Park by Brown and Noakes has pleasing features in the horrid style – viaduct, grotto, etc – a hermitage occupied by a lunatic since twenty years without discourse or companion save for a pet tortoise, Plautus by name, which he suffers children to touch on request.’

BERNARD: ‘Five hundred acres including forty of lake – the Park by Brown and Noakes has pleasing features in the horrid style – viaduct, grotto, etc – a hermitage occupied by a lunatic since twenty years without discourse or companion save for a pet tortoise, Plautus by name, which he suffers children to touch on request.’

HANNAH: Don’t let Bernard get to you. It’s only performance art, you know. Rhetoric, they used to teach it in ancient times, like PT. It’s not about being right, they had philosophy for that. Rhetoric was their chat show. Bernard’s indignation is a sort of aerobics for when he gets on television.

HANNAH: Don’t let Bernard get to you. It’s only performance art, you know. Rhetoric, they used to teach it in ancient times, like PT. It’s not about being right, they had philosophy for that. Rhetoric was their chat show. Bernard’s indignation is a sort of aerobics for when he gets on television.

HANNAH: ‘The testament of the lunatic serves as a caution against French fashion...for it was Frenchified mathematick that brought him to the melancholy certitude of a world without light or life...as a wooden stove that must consume itself until ash and stove are as one, and heat is gone from the earth.’

HANNAH: ‘He died aged two score years and seven, hoary as Job and meagre as a cabbage-stalk, the proof of his prediction even yet unyielding to his labours for the restitution of hope through good English algebra.’

HANNAH: ‘He died aged two score years and seven, hoary as Job and meagre as a cabbage-stalk, the proof of his prediction even yet unyielding to his labours for the restitution of hope through good English algebra.’

VALENTINE: By poets and lunatics from time immemorial.